Robert Scoble at Jive in their new offices. He’s talking to their CEO about how Jive stacks up against Microsoft and Salesforce initiatives. They discuss next big challenges, the different approaches, and how Jive fits in.

Warning. There is a lot of buzzword use. You’ll want to listen for the sections on lessons learned, challenges, and the future predictions.

This is not one of Scoble’s best interviews. It’s partially his fault, as he seems to be ill prepared to ask some hard questions. Also the Jive representative uses a ton of market speak and avoids specifics.

This video found at Building43.

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble took time out of their media maven lives to take a San Quentin field trip. Yep, San Quentin prison.  Dave and Robert spent time visiting prisoners and staff inside one of the most famous prisons in the U.S.

Dave shared his take aways on his blog. He titled his post “Our all-you-can-eat lifestlye.” And this quote makes his revelation clear.

We expect so much, and we get it. We live the all-you-can-eat lifestyle. But just a few miles away reality is very different.

Dave is right of course. We live in a world where we gripe not about being fed, or having Internet access, but how our smart phone misbehaves and the sushi prices are high. Even the most modest of my friends has a phone that supports messaging and has access to the net.

I’ve never been in prison but as Dave points out, it’s a drastically different life. He met a man who was unfamiliar with any of our modern conveniences. Heck, no Twitter for that guy.  Today in contrast a friend and I talked about trying to bring others on board with Twitter.  In a couple of days I’m co-leading a class on Twitter for real estate agents.

Dave’s article makes me stop and be reminded of how wonderful a time we live in, and what a wonderful set of circumstances, especially here in the States.

So this week, while you’re out riding the waves of the net, take a few minutes to read Dave’s take. Come back here, go there, or comment on your own blog.  One step better – go visit your own local prison, poor house, or orphanage.

Seth Godin introduces the concept of the third guy with the video above.

To quote from his blog:

My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That’s when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it’s guy #3 who made it a movement.

Initiators are rare indeed, but it’s scary to be the leader. Guy #3 is rare too, but it’s a lot less scary and just as important. Guy #49 is irrelevant. No bravery points for being part of the mob.

We need more guy #3s.

I’m in total agreement about the folks beyond guy #3; they were just along for the ride. So the question is how to be guy #3.

I’m not sure I have a tried and true answer to that question, but I do have some tell tail behaviors.

The third guy is…

• the guy that after the two wiz kids in the class get their answers out, raises his hand and asks the dumb question.
• the guy that after the two tennis pros take up a game at the local court, grabs his Walmart racket and some random stranger and starts up game on the next court over.
• the guy that after the first two order fancy scotch and no on else can decide, jumps in and orders a light beer.

If I had to say there is one common characteristic, it’s that the third guy is not afraid to take part but also not afraid to not be the best/perfect/leader and just have fun with it.

Those types serve the purpose of bridging the gap between the early adopters or pack leaders and the rest of the crowd. It’s their initiative that really breaks the ice on an event or a new tool or technique. They aren’t afraid to be imperfect and laugh at themselves.

How can we take that and walk away with something useful? We can be that third guy (or gal) every day with the huge amount of web 2.0 tools coming out.

One guy that gets this is Robert Scoble. He took up blogging without worrying about getting it right; he just blogged what came out. When video tools go started, he didn’t wait for the book or the guide lines from the inventors or early adopters, he dove in and started recording low quality, fun and spontaneous videos.

His behaviors enabled us less than cutting edge folks to look at those tools with a wink and a nod instead of fear and frustration. We no longer cared so much if our blog posts didn’t follow the rules of grammar, talk about starlets, or ran way to short for a ‘real article’. It made me realize that recording 12 second snippets can not only be fun but rewarding, and that wearing a strange hat can be just as valuable as HD video.

So keep in mind, you aren’t always going to be the cutting edge person, the one who uses a tool first, but you can be the one that jumps in and makes it less scary, lowering the barrier for the rest of us.

Notes:
Read Seth Godin’s full post, #3.
Robert Scoble’s latest project

     Robert Scoble, most prolific geek on the net, shares his thoughts of Friendfeed and why it will or won’t go mainstream. His first post, Why FriendFeed won’t go mainstream, obviously covers the why nots.  The second part is Why FriendFeed will go mainstream.

     I’ll not spoil the articles for you, but did want to talk to one or two from each article. First from the Why it won’t article, #8, “It pisses bloggers off because all their comments are moving onto FriendFeed rather than staying on their blogs.”

     Scoble mentions that your blog post is likely to get more comments on Friendfeed than on your blog.  Why?  Because your friends and readers are no longer just following your blog.  They are following your videos, all three of your blogs, and your Pownce and Flickr streams.  They’ve found it easier to catch you in one place, Friendfeed, than checking all of those separately.   The concern is that your visitors will go down. Truth here.  All that Friendfeed shows is the link.  Folks still have to click over to read the article.  So maybe they aren’t commenting directly on the blog, but being on Friendfeed makes you a lot more visible.

     Then there’s #6 on the why not list, about finding new friends.  The argument being that it’s tough to find new friends there, unless you want to find Scoble, Dave Winer and some other uber geeks.  I’d contend though, that with this service, as others, that folks aren’t coming without their friends. Oh, they might be the first in their peer group, but rarely are they the only.  This is true for me.  Early adopter but now a swarm of my contacts is using it.  And believe it or not, finding my blog posts and stuff there instead of directly from my RSS.

     Now about the will go mainstream side. #5 is one of two favorites from the list, “It is freaking fast and much more reliable than Twitter.”   This is so true.  I’m often seeing Friendfeed show tweets before I get them on the client I use.  Reliable, even more so.  Twitter seems to be offline or bugged a noticeable part of the time.  Friendfeed is managing incoming data from a slew of sources and yet it seems to handle and keep up with them without error.  However, I wonder how dense the user base is yet.  Does it have the many thousands of users that Twitter has?  How will it fair in six months?

     Then my other favorite, #9, I’ll call it the all the cool folks are there item.  It’s the fact that many interesting geek and non-geeks alike are on FriendFeed.  Scoble mentions a few interesting ones, Barack Obama, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Hey, you’re there too right?  This is a deal maker for me.  I follow friends of course, but thought and discussion leaders are definitely folks I enjoy following as well. Are some of them just Internet rockstars? Sure. But some are well known in other arenas and just happen to be blogging, and making other social media.

     Where do I stand? I’m in the will go mainstream camp. My reasons? It’s only going to get easier to use, and people will become aware of it from mainstream sites, such as Obama’s campaign page.  Right now it doesn’t have the eyes of millions, but as it grows and changes, it’s user base will grow and mature as well.   The feedback is just beginning to role in for them.

     Where do you stand? User? Never heard of it?  Following a slew of folks? Or just your real life friends? Bloggers? Politicians? Your neighbor?